The present invention relates generally to the art of transferring a plurality of parallel, elongate, generally rod-shaped articles from a first to a second location without any substantial disturbance of the parallel orientation of such articles. Although the invention is of fairly general utility, the following description will be couched in the first instance in terms of a device used in a crayon-manufacturing system for transferring batches of crayons from one type of crayon-holding mechanism to another.
Generally speaking, crayons may be fabricated or manufactured by various means. One such means is the machine disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,957,408, issued on May 18, 1976, which is assigned to the same assignee as the instant application and the subject matter of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. This machine utilizes a rotating mold table having a plurality of multi-cavity molds into which a suitable wax material in molten state can be introduced for being shaped into the form of batches of parallelly oriented crayons. Such a machine, however, requires means by which the respective batches of crayons extracted from the molds can be transferred, while still parallel, to other locations for storage or for further processing, e.g., labelling and packaging for sale.